The third of the Donald Wollheim juveniles is The Secret Of The Ninth Planet. This is a better book than the Saturn one previously posted, although not up to the level of the Martian Moons book.
It is discovered that someone is tapping the suns energy as it reaches earth and sending it somewhere else. And the same is happening on all the other planets apparently. Young Burl Denning is in on the destruction of the Earth station and has apparently been ‘charged’ in some way so he is taken along on the expedition to destroy the other stations and find out who is doing this.
On a conveniently just ready anti-gravity spaceship.
But the action is good, and I did enjoy voyaging in the old solar system. As I mentioned in the Lucky Starr books posts, I do wish the solar system was more like we thought it could be in the 1950’s and 60’s. At least a chance for life on many of the planets and moons. And in these stories there is life of some sort everywhere.
Now we have possible conditions for life on Europa, Enceladus, Titan, and more possible signs on Mars. But none of these possibilities include actual intelligent life in the solar system. (I leave out Earth as the abode of intelligent life for obvious reasons)
Ah well maybe I should grow up. Or maybe not.
Anyway it’s a pretty good book. Maybe someday I will find the others that Wollheim wrote.
Meanwhile, the next posts are going to be about juveniles from James Blish.
This post is about the second of the Donald Wollheim juveniles I have read. Unfortunately its not a really good one. I collected it later on in my reading mainly because of my good memories of The Secret Of The Martian Moons (previous post).
This one is called The Secret of Saturn’s Rings. Its another young scientist type story Bruce Rhodes and his father and crew battling greedy businessmen and UN-type corrupt officials to save the Earth.
The overall story is good enough, but I find it hard to get past the obvious flaws in the science. I am not an expert in orbital mechanics, and maybe in the 1950’s they didn’t know better, but I doubt it.
The explanation of how they use asteroids to hitch a ride to Saturn is very flawed in my opinion. There are a few other science flaws in it too.
But, the story is not terrible, and I guess not every novel is great anyway. So on to the next one, slightly better, in a future post.
Now we come to 3 books by Donald Wollheim. They are not part of a series, but are set, more or less, in the same solar system. The one that was known in the 1950’s and is somewhat similar to the one in Isaac Asimov’s Lucky Starr series of books.
I have read these three, and there appear to be others such as The Secret of Saturn’s Rays . Some of these were written under the pen name of David Grinnell. I have never read these others.
He also wrote a series of books about Mike Mars which also appear to be juveniles, although again I have not read them.
Donald Wollheim was one of the Golden Age writers. If you consider that age the 1950’s which for me it was. Books written then are ones I like and remember a lot,not just the juveniles. And yes a lot of fans consider the golden age the 1930’s but some of that stuff is too dated for me.
Anyway, Wollheim was an editor, publisher, writer, fan, convention goer, etc. And this first book I will post about is one of my favorite juveniles.
It’s The Secret Of The Martian Moons. To me at the time I first read it, and still upon re-reading it’s a great story. There’s an abandoned civilization on Mars. The Mars of Percival Lowell, with plants and sort of canals and an atmosphere.
But where are the Martians? Their houses are here, and storerooms and evidence of an advanced civilization all sealed in vaults and inaccessible even after a century of trying.
So Earth abandons the Mars Colony as a lost cause, and too expensive. But, Nelson Barr, young hero, and his father and others secretly stay behind.
Because there have been mysterious goings on. They fly to Deimos to set up observation of Mars and wait.
Soon aliens are in evidence,but are they the Martians? Further adventures with them, and the invading Marauders ensue.
One of the better juvenile SF adventure novels in my opinion. I wish I could say the same about the other two, but that will wait for my next posts.
